"Most undergrads who get a paper published are not publishing math papers." Err, I am not sure how to respond here. I said "it wasn't unheard of", which means

"Most undergrads who get a paper published are not publishing math papers." Err, I am not sure how to respond here. I said "it wasn't unheard of", which means when I went through I heard of a few bright undergrads getting publications in maths. It definitely happens. My personal experience says it would be extremely rare to get a phd now without a publication (again, in maths). It was different in the past. Hard numbers would be better than anecdata I guess.